


better times collide with now and better times, better times are coming still

by unwindmyself



Category: Deadwood
Genre: Coda, Coming Out, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Period Typical Attitudes, Unconditional Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 01:32:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: Following the Stars' wedding, Sofia has some questions (and one confession) for her mama.





	better times collide with now and better times, better times are coming still

**Author's Note:**

> DEADWOOD SAID GAY RIGHTS
> 
> This follows the film, which is to say Sofia's an adult and which is also to say that events of the film are heavily referenced.
> 
> To clarify: the period typical attitudes (i.e. homophobia, sexism, etcetera) are things that have to be dealt with. Alma is an amazing and supportive mom who just wants to help, even though it may be hard.
> 
> And if y'all know me, you'll know that in addition to queering your favs, it's my mission to remind you that many of your favs are autistic. It's not tagged because it's not something that's ever explicitly stated in the story because it's not something the characters have the words for even slightly, but Sofia is autistic and this is a fact.

It’s late when Sofia returns to their hotel room, her cheeks flushed, her hair and dress spotted with melting snow, and Alma feels for a moment that she might recognize that giddy, guilty expression on her face, though she’s never seen it on Sofia’s specifically.

“Oh,” Sofia exclaims, eyes going wide and voice dropping as if it would make any difference, “did I wake you?”

“That would suggest that I’d been able to fall asleep after a night as tumultuous as this one,” Alma teases, adopting one of the faces she wears when poking fun at others’ impressions of her. Her earlier mood, Sofia notices with some satisfaction, is gone, or at least better-hidden. “Come here, let me brush your hair and get some of the damp out.”

“Alright,” says Sofia, still a bit sheepish. She shuts the door and hurries into the room, glancing behind her as if afraid to have woken another guest somewhere down the hall with her entry. Once satisfied this isn’t the case, she ducks behind the dressing screen, hangs her party dress to dry, and slips on her nightgown and bed jacket. Everything in its place.

Neither speaks for a while after she comes to sit at the vanity, and in fact their silence lasts near the whole time it takes to unpin Sofia’s hair, but finally Alma asks, “Were you corralled into helping clean up?”

“Yes,” Sofia says quickly, flashing a nervous smile. “Yes, that’s what happened. I thought it would be polite, and, and it hardly seemed fair to ask Trixie to clean up after her own wedding.”

Alma nods. She believes that Sofia would do her part, and she knows that Trixie had concerns of her own to attend to (some marital, others more complicated and not exactly things she feels comfortable broaching with Sofia), but she doesn’t entirely believe that manners and consideration were the only thing delaying Sofia’s return. She can’t put a name to the rest, exactly, but she senses something.

“That’s very kind of you,” she says instead. “I’d say the Gem has seen much messier nights than that one.” From what she could tell, all of the blood was spilled outside, not in.

They’re quiet another while after that, but finally Sofia ventures to say, soft in case her assessment is wrong, “You seem happier than before.”

Alma turns her head just slightly enough that Sofia can’t fully read her expression, something she does when she’s still sorting through her own true feelings about a thing. “I am,” she says quietly, almost sounding like she believes it. “I’ll admit that the situation isn’t how I’d wish it, in my selfish heart, but perhaps it’s as it should be.”

Sofia nods minutely. “Mr. Utter would be glad you’ve come into his land,” she says carefully, addressing this first because she expects it’s less dangerous. “No matter what you do with it.”

“He would be gladder still if it was yours,” Alma says thoughtfully, untwisting the last coil in Sofia’s fine hair.

Sofia blinks. “I don’t know what I’d do with it,” she says.

“You don’t have to know yet,” Alma says. “But it’s yours if you want it.” She smiles one of her teasing smiles, the ones more sisterly than motherly, and it’s meant to be reassuring but Sofia doesn’t entirely find it so. “Consider it an early start to your inheritance.”

“Please don’t say that,” Sofia murmurs, wincing. Inheritance means her mama’s passing, which she openly fears, having lost so many others she relies on and loves; inheritance means a tangible reason to be courted by a man, maybe more than one man even, which she privately (and for reasons becoming clearer to her by the minute) dreads.

“Oh, darling,” Alma hums, sighing. She forgets sometimes which sorts of playing and humor suit Sofia and which don’t. To make up for it, she kisses the top of Sofia’s head in a way that’s better suited to a younger girl but that (perhaps because of the unpleasant turn of conversation) she doesn’t squirm from. “You’re grown now, I want you to have something of your own. That’s all.”

“May we discuss it later, Mama?” Sofia asks in a whisper, and it strikes Alma, not for the first time, how much younger Sofia is at this age than she herself was. She’d already become embittered from too many broken promises and callous treatment, not to mention certain intoxicants, while despite all the great tragedy Sofia has known she’s been lucky enough to stay hopeful. She’s smart, unmistakably so, but she’s not at all jaded.

(Is this something Alma envies? Oh, yes. Is it something that can be credited to Sofia’s strange upbringing, how her extended family was made of cowfolks and whores and lawmen and businesswomen and a slew of others who believed in more than the shallow appearance of things? Very likely.)

“Mama?” Sofia repeats, brow furrowing.

“Yes, of course,” Alma hurries to say, shaking her head to dislodge the more melancholy of her thoughts and squeezing Sofia’s shoulders gently. “Until the disturbance, I thought the wedding was lovely. I’m _so_ pleased for Trixie and Mr. Star.”

Sofia giggles - a welcome sound. “I remember when all they did was stare moon-eyed at each other,” she says. “It was funny, seeing Trixie act so shy. I hadn’t thought her capable.”

“I hadn’t either,” Alma smirks, like it’s a private joke of sorts. “I doubt she much wanted anyone to see that side of her.”

“Is that why they only just married?” Sofia asks.

“I suspect that’s a part of it, but I can’t know for sure,” Alma muses. It’s not as if she and Trixie spoke on the matter, or as if she and Trixie have really spoken at length in years, but she still counts the other woman a friend and has at least an inkling about her feelings on this matter. “I think it took her awhile to accept her own happiness.”

“I wish I didn’t understand, but I do,” Sofia murmurs. 

Alma nods, her gaze again going distant for a moment before she starts to comb through Sofia’s hair. It’s all either of them wish to say on that subject.

But this pause makes Sofia panic; this is another difference between mother and daughter, Sofia’s intense worry about offending. Without thinking, she asks, not quite connecting it to her own more personal concerns until it’s said aloud, “Will Jane marry Miss Stubbs, too? Now they’ve reconciled.”

It’s Alma’s turn to blink in surprise, though she tries not to seem bothered. “Jane and Miss… darling, they’re both women,” she says slowly, realizing how thin a counterargument that is. 

“But they’re in love, aren’t they?” Sofia presses.

“I don’t really know,” Alma says, and insofar as neither of the other women have confessed their feelings for each other to her specifically that’s the truth, but she can see it clear as day, and so, it seems, can her daughter.

“They _are,_ ” Sofia insists, earnest as anything. “They look at each other like people in love. I’ve seen enough people in love to know what that looks like.” She doesn’t cite examples, which Alma interprets (correctly) to mean that her list includes people such as her and Mssrs. Bullock and/or Ellsworth. Ever tactful, Sofia is, if just on a formality.

So Alma sets her jaw. “I suppose they may well be,” she concedes.

“Oh,” Sofia says, staring at her mama like she’s putting something together. “ _Oh_.”

“Sofia?”

“They’re not supposed to be, though, is that it?” Sofia asks, her gaze falling and her voice going quieter still. “Because they’re both women.”

“The Bible,” Alma begins slowly, trying to collect her thoughts and sort out how, exactly, to explain Sapphism to her still-precocious adult child, “holds that relations between two women, or two men for that matter, are improper, and society tends to think the same.”

“Oh,” Sofia repeats, near a whisper.

“But as I’ve gotten older,” Alma says, “I’ve realized that we’ve no way to know that what’s in the book is the complete truth, to say nothing of how men interpret it.”

This doesn’t shock Sofia, exactly; though she supposes she believes in God, with some reticence, religion is not her mama’s priority and therefore it is not hers either. But it still seems a bit scandalous to question the Bible’s validity, even in the interest of the subject that she herself is trying and struggling to raise.

“I doubt that God gives a damn, really,” Alma continues. Her language always becomes fouler when she’s contemplating Deadwood, so it makes sense that being back in camp would have the same effect. “I would even venture to say that He may have had a hand in bringing together two souls in need of companionship such as Jane and Miss Stubbs.”

Sofia worries her lip, finding a different story than the one she wants most to tell falling from her tongue. “I remember first meeting Miss Stubbs,” she says. “Your father had come to camp, and Mr. Bullock liked him even less than you did.”

Alma’s eyebrows lift. She remembers this day for its many exceptional events, both good and bad, but she hadn’t thought Sofia would have held it in any special regard. But Sofia remembers all sorts of things. It’s her gift and her curse.

“Miss Stubbs came to the room to return something your father lost at the saloon,” Sofia continues, and Alma truly can’t tell if her daughter is being polite or if she isn’t aware that the altercation so delicately alluded to cost Mr. Russell some of his teeth. “Mr. Bullock was there, too, and Miss Stubbs took me for lunch downstairs. She talked to me differently than everyone else did, very careful like she didn’t want to hurt me somehow. She was kind that day, and after, and gentle in a way that’s good for Jane.” There’s a long pause, weighted with history and hope and a thousand other things, and then Sofia dares to ask, “Did you love Mr. Bullock?”

“Yes,” Alma says. She doesn’t have to think twice to answer that.

“Do you still?”

This takes longer to respond to, though she expects it’s coming, but finally Alma says, “In a distant way, as one would love a beautiful dream. I needed him once and I suspect I’ll want him always, but even back then, I knew that we weren’t meant to last.”

That’s more or less the answer Sofia guessed at, but it still hurts to hear admitted aloud. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I wish…” But she’s not sure what she wishes. She wants her mama happy, but she wouldn’t want that at the expense of Mrs. Bullock, whose kindness she owes much to, who’s always seemed well-matched to her husband. 

But the thought of wanting something you know you can’t, or shouldn’t, have… that stings painfully.

“Don’t be,” Alma insists, taking a spare tea towel and starting to wring the water from Sofia’s hair. “I’m not unhappy, despite my earlier display. And I’m not so sure I’m designed for marriage at all, not really.”

“Maybe I’m not either,” Sofia says, finding a new foothold in the conversation. “I don’t want to spend my life tied to some man.”

“You don’t have to,” Alma promises. It’s always been unspoken truth that, in addition to the fact that Alma would be a hypocrite for insisting Sofia wed when she stays unattached, she would never force Sofia into something as she herself was forced.

Sofia swallows heavily, though, knowing that was too vague a declaration and feeling the whole confession threatening to overcome her. “Mama?”

“What is it?” Alma asks, struck again with that feeling of vague recognition, of knowing and not knowing what’s coming all at once.

“I’ve never liked even imagining my life with a man, any man, half as much as I liked just dancing in the snow with Caroline tonight,” Sofia whispers, pausing timidly between too many of the words almost like she’s afraid.

And just like that, the pieces come together. The excuses for her late return, the questions about Jane and Joanie Stubbs, the disappointment in society’s reactions to such things, the way that Alma realizes it took her a moment to attach the name Caroline to the girl in question and the way that realization makes her feel guilty, the abject disinterest Sofia has always had in the young men her own age, the concern about unattainable loves.

Alma’s apparently taking too long to answer, because Sofia starts to sniffle helplessly.

“Oh,” Alma exclaims, setting the towel aside. “Oh, Sofia, no, don’t cry.”

“But I’m _wrong!_ ” Sofia exclaims, pressing her fists against her temples like she’s trying to drown out loud, upsetting noises that only she can hear. It’s not a wholly unfamiliar gesture, and they both know that it means she’s truly distraught.

Alma catches her hands, though, and laces their fingers together. “No, you’re not,” she says. “You’re a clever, charming young woman, sensitive and honest and adored by so many. You’re exactly who you’re supposed to be. Exactly as God intended you.”

Sofia whimpers. “But you _said,_  you said that…”

“I said that it’s bullshit, too,” Alma reminds, smirking. “Frankly, I can't be bothered to care if someone thinks it’s wrong that Jane loves Miss Stubbs, or that you prefer Miss Caroline’s company to a boy’s. It’s not hurting anyone, it makes you happy, and isn’t that the most important thing, truly?”

“But it’s not _done,_ ” Sofia says, gulping back tears. “I don’t mean here, nobody here that matters minds about Jane and Miss Stubbs. But in other places. It’s not done, is it?”

“I don’t know,” Alma admits. “Marriage isn’t, but just being together… I don’t know. But these days, more and more women don’t marry. Especially self-reliant ones as you’ll be.”

“And perhaps some of them are like me in this way?” Sofia asks hopefully.

“I don’t know,” Alma says again, smiling bittersweetly (it’s not meant as pity, though, Sofia can tell, it’s just a genuine regret that she can’t help more). “I don’t know how any of this works. I would expect Miss Stubbs would give the best explanation, if you asked her.” They both laugh, though it wasn’t funny. “But I do know that no matter what, you’re my daughter and I love you.”

Sofia bursts out crying for true, but she’s laughing at the same time. “I love you too,” she nearly yells, turning to hug her mama around the waist in a way that she’s much too old to do.

When she finally breaks away, she’s stopped crying and it looks like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. She’s back to that bright, airy expression and countenance she had as she danced in the thoroughfare, as she tried to sneak back into the room. She’s just a girl with a crush, innocent and excited and navigating a whole world of possibilities.

It’s exactly what Alma has always wanted for Sofia. It won’t be an easy life, trying to manage life with these so-called “unconventional” desires, but they’ll consider the whole scope of it later. Right now, the only thing Alma needs to do is to be a loving mother, to support her child.

So once she’s gone back to Sofia’s hair, brushing through it again now that it’s drier, she flashes a mischievous grin and asks, “I saw you dancing with Miss Caroline, but did you kiss her, too?”

“ _Mama_!” Sofia exclaims, both mortified and as delighted as she can be.


End file.
